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If you spend your days gathering proof of what's wrong, your brain will keep serving you more of it. If you spend your days practicing possibility, it will serve you that too. So let's practice. Possibility. Your listening to relish the podcast for people ready to stop chasing self-improvement and start savoring their lives. If you're tired of the hamster wheel of healing and hungry for more joy, presence and meaning. You're in the right place. Welcome to Relish. I'm Alyssia, and today I am diving into a reframe that has changed my life and my clients lives. We are flipping the 80 / 20. I've talked about it before, flipping from
spending most of our energy fixing what's wrong to living from what's right. In this episode, we are going to dive into why we fixate on problems, and we're going to look through the lens of both science and heart. We're going to look at how fixing mode keeps us stuck, and we're going to talk about what it means to partner with your protector. We're going to go into the science of strengths and focusing on what's right with you. And I'm going to give you a simple set of practices that can help shift your ratio starting today. This is about joy as a way of being,
not some reward at the end. Now, if this episode supports you, please tap follow subscribe. Share it with a friend. Please leave that five star rating and review. You might have heard I am trying to get to 100 reviews on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and your words really help more people find relish. So thank you. And one more reminder I started this relish hotline. Okay pretty cool. You can call in. You can leave a voicemail, ask questions, voice challenges, anything you're needing support with, I might integrate them into an episode. And I have this kind of fun idea where
I would love if you would call in and share a message of gratitude. You know, Call and share what is something you're grateful for or someone you're grateful for? Or tell a little story. You can share your name. You can leave it anonymous, but I thought for the holidays this could be kind of fun. I don't exactly know what'll become, but let's see. So I would love to hear from you. Let's dive in to fixing that urge to fix. For one, it's totally natural. It really makes sense if you think about it. We come to this work. All of us come to self-help work for different
reasons, but in some way we want change. We want to feel different. We want to feel better. And so what we do naturally is we look for what's wrong and then we try to fix it. So let's take a common example. You might notice yourself people pleasing or procrastinating or feeling you can't make decisions striving for perfection. Naturally, you want that to stop, so you analyze it. You might read about it, you gain awareness about it. You do your work around it all with this good Intention and in coaching. This is what we are trained to do. We identify stock points.
That's what coaching really is. This is intuitive. Here's where I'm stuck. You know this is what's getting in the way of what I want. So let's focus on that. Let's fix that. And that approach can work to a point. But if we're not careful we end up living in the problem and never really going beyond it. We can start to see ourselves as this collection of problems, of things to fix. Sometimes we can even become the patterns that we live through. We start to identify with them like, that's who I really am. But the point of this work is not to manage your problems forever. The point is freedom. More joy, more meaning, more
aliveness. And when all of our energy is going to what's getting in the way, we forget to practice feeling the things we want to feel and being the person we want to be. I've got a whole episode coming on that topic soon now. I remember when I first started doing this work, I thought awareness alone could free me. You know, like if I could just identify every single pattern and problem, then one day I'd be fixed or I'd be able to fix myself. But then I kind of became obsessed with finding more patterns, and I became hard on myself about those issues. I started living in this kind
of awareness. Hell is what we call it at the Hoffman process where I'm like, f**k, there must be something really wrong with me if I have so many patterns and I've done so much work and still this keeps happening, I must be broken. This self-help in, you know, personal growth work and my view it's here to relieve suffering. But instead it was taking me into deeper shame. That is not relief of suffering. I started to realize I was not healing, I was auditing myself. I was living in this self-improvement loop and not really living my life.
And that realization was kind of a wake up call. Maybe you felt something like this. I know a lot of the people I work with do, like, you're constantly trying to fix yourself or get somewhere else, and it's almost like it becomes like, I need to graduate from being human. So this episode is about how to step off that treadmill, that hamster wheel. I think this 80 / 20 imbalance is especially common right now because we live in a culture of optimization. Everything you know, productivity hacks, skincare routines is all about improvement.
Even the word hack, you know, it's hacking life. This word hack is about having a strategy to do something more quickly. There's a message everywhere coming at us from all directions saying you could be better, But you really cannot hack being human. And of course, you know, growth is beautiful. I'm not saying we don't want to grow, but the constant pressure to upgrade can make us feel like we're not enough as we are. At least that's what I started to feel. I'm not trying to throw away goals or ambition, and I talked recently in that episode about expectations and aspiration. But this is about shifting the fuel, okay. Growth that's driven by self trust feels totally different.
It feels like curiosity instead of growth that's driven by self-criticism. That's more the survival mode. It's kind of like the difference between living from abundance and scarcity. A few years ago, a client shared some journaling that they did with me in a session, and it was an interesting wake up call for myself. Actually, I learned so much about myself coaching others. It was a little heartbreaking. I remember reading through what they had sent me and almost every line started with, I need to, I should be. Uh, there was almost nothing
that focused on what they were doing, right or what was working. Not one. And I'm looking at this person. I mean, the way I view this person, they are this amazing bright light. They're so aware, they're so generous and kind and really committed to their work. And seeing that in them, seeing the way they were relating to themselves, it became like a mirror for me this moment. I was like, Holy crap, I do this. You know, it didn't start that way, though. All of us, we find the path. We find some relief from suffering from the work that we do, and it feels good
and we want more relief. But to get it, we keep focusing on the suffering. I had totally stopped asking myself what really matters to me and what brings me joy. It was like my whole objective was just managing myself like this project or a plan. So that moment for me was this awakening of I need to acknowledge what went right. And I started actually doing that at the end of the day or when journaling. And it could have been about the day itself or about myself. I would stop and ask a kind of self appreciation practice that kind of replaced my gratitude
practice for a bit of like what went right today. And, you know, it does feel a little awkward at first. If you've ever done a self appreciation practice, it's not easy, but slowly I think it started to rewire something. I started noticing small moments of delight that I had been overlooking. Small moments of things I was proud of. And it started to become proof that the joy that I was after. It's not always this loud, overt experience, but it's easy to ignore when I'm so busy fixing and focusing on the suffering and focusing on the negative. So try this with me for a minute, okay?
Just become present. Take a breath. Feel yourself sitting here aware. Notice your sensations, and then I want you to just say to yourself and maybe even say it out loud. I want to not be afraid. Just say that to yourself and notice what happens in your body. I want to not be afraid. Okay. And then take a breath. And I want you to now say. I want to feel courageous. I want to feel brave. Say that and just notice what happens in your body. So tune in at that embodied level. And notice if there's a difference for me.
The first, I want to not feel afraid. It keeps me focused on the fear. I even feel actually a little bit of fear. I feel some like sensations of contraction and tightness and some resistance. I want to feel courageous. I want to feel brave. That for me, even when I just say it right now, my body kind of opens. There's like an expansion, there's possibility, there's aliveness. All right. Now, the Buddha said, or at least there's this quote attributed to him. Okay. He said, whatever one frequently ponders, that becomes the inclination of the mind.
From a neuroscience perspective, that's predictive processing and action. We've talked about this a lot before in previous episodes. I'll link them below. But the relevance here is your experience becomes what your brain repeatedly practices. So just think about this. If most of your attention. 80% of your attention is on what's broken, what's missing? What's wrong? What's wrong with you? The brain is going to keep prioritizing that information. You know, in the intention isn't bad. Your intellect, your mind. It's trying to help. It's trying to solve a problem. But it doesn't realize the constant fixing. It's keeping you looping in the same state. You are not a
problem to be solved. In orienting to yourself and to your personal work and to your patterns in that way, it leads you to this trap. It's very similar to the do versus be trap that we broke down a long time ago, and one of the first episodes I'll link that one below two. So right now, again, another quick reflection. I want you to just pause and consider for yourself something you've been working on some, you know, area you've been trying to fix. Maybe it's a habit or a relationship pattern or something about your body. So just say whatever it is to yourself as a negative statement. First in the negative, focusing on what
you don't want. I want to stop doing this or I want to be not this. I want to stop being so lazy. I want to stop overeating. I want to stop. I want to not be so indecisive. Okay, whatever it is, say that to yourself. Just notice how that feels. Notice actually what happens in your body. Get curious for you and then whatever that thing is that you're wanting to work on. Rephrase it now as a positive aspiration, focusing on what you do want and perhaps how you want to be, how you want to feel. What is it that you really want? I want to show up for myself. I want to respect Myself. I want to feel committed
and energized. I want to trust myself. I want to trust my decisions. So say that in a positive. And actually say it out loud. If that's safe in your environment right now, just notice what happens in your body. You might even pause to just explore this for a minute so that tiny shift changes your nervous system. It's kind of like you're doing a neurological rep to flip that 80 over 20. I see so many people who love the work. They love the personal growth journey. That's probably you. You wouldn't be here listening if you didn't care about your growth. But so many people end up spending most of their
time. 80% of their time is my, you know, anecdotal estimate, all the energy focused on fixing and healing and analyzing. And maybe there's like 20% left over for joy or gratitude or creativity or connection, which are the things we really want. We keep trying to fix so that we can finally live one day. It's that hamster wheel. One day when I get there and we never get there. Living in the present is the very thing that heals. One day is in the future or regret. I'm lost in the past. The pattern's like perfectionism. Not being decisive. People pleasing. Procrastination. They didn't come from nowhere.
They came from pain. Each one was a coping mechanism that your system built to keep you safe. You learned at a young age to protect yourself. You learned to cope. Okay. The report card isn't good enough. And so maybe you strive to be perfect or to be better all the time. Maybe a sibling was prioritized over. You got more attention and you learned to shut down or to hide or maybe to people, please, to get attention. You became really afraid of failing. Something bad happened when you failed. Maybe you got criticized, and then you start procrastinating and avoid starting anything at all so that you don't have
to experience failure. These are just examples, but you get the point. You are not born with these patterns. You learned them and they're not a part of who you really are. They're a part of what I call your protector. This version, this part of you that was there, trying to protect you, to support you. When we treat those patterns as problems to eliminate, we are rejecting the very parts of us that were there all along. Trying to help us, trying to protect us. Healing isn't about fixing those parts, it's about understanding them. Meeting them with compassion instead of shame. So let's talk about why
this is so hard to change from a neuroscience lens for one. Your brain has this negativity bias. You might have heard of it. It's this evolutionary feature that was designed to keep you alive. It pays more attention to threat than safety because noticing danger, of course, is going to help you survive. It's going to it's got more survival value than noticing joy. That bias today, it's not showing up as tigers. It's showing up as self-criticism. You know what I mean? Have you ever gotten a compliment? You can get ten compliments in a day, and then you get one
critique, one criticism, one piece of negative feedback. And what's your brain going to focus on? The negative. The critique. That's this bias at work. Then there's also this mechanism called predictive processing. That's your brain's tendency to predict what will happen next. Based on past experience, it wants to be efficient. So if your mind is used to scanning around looking for what's wrong, it's going to keep doing that automatically. And then we can also acknowledge your reticular activating system. This is a network in the brainstem. It acts kind of
like a filter deciding what information is going to get through to your conscious awareness. So if you are constantly focused on what's broken, your reticular activating system is going to tag that as important, and you're going to start noticing the evidence of what's wrong with you everywhere. See, there's proof that I'm bad. There's proof that no one likes me. I really am different, I don't belong, do you hear what I'm saying? Does that resonate? We end up constantly finding proof for why we're not enough. This is how. What we give our attention
becomes our reality. What we repeatedly focus on the brain is going to build pathways for. So when the Buddha said, whatever one frequently ponders becomes the inclination of the mind. Neuroscience agrees with that. Now, when we look at our protective patterns, the parts of us that again procrastinate trying to be perfect, you know, saying yes when we mean no. We often label them as these patterns, these bad habits. But from a nervous system perspective, they were survival strategies. Perfectionism might have kept you safe by earning approval. People pleasing might
have actually reduced conflict in your childhood. Maybe it did keep you safe, maybe even physically. Procrastination might have protected you from feeling failure or criticism or judgment. So those parts came about. Those patterns came about because of some kind of pain, some kind of fear, some kind of unmet need. They were coping mechanisms. Think about that word cope coping mechanism. We only need a coping mechanism when something is hard and needs to be coped with. So those parts, they don't need to be condemned. They actually need compassion. They don't need to be fixed. They need to be witnessed.
So when you approach them with curiosity, when those patterns come up, if there can be a sense of like, oh, I see what you're trying to do for me, that's when you start integrating them instead of fighting them. You can actually even try saying this out loud when a pattern shows up. If you notice your people pleasing or saying no when you mean yes and start beating yourself up like, oh, I've been trying so hard to overcome this pattern and here I am doing it again. Can you just go like, hey, thank you protector, thank you. I know you're here trying to help. So this might sound
like a little soft or. Woo. Or maybe not woo, but, like, weak. Okay, but I'm serious. There's something about saying it out loud that gets it out of my head, making it real. It's like it turns the light on in the darkness, and then it kind of loses its grip and brings me back into presents. Something as simple as thank you, protector. Like, then I'm back in awareness here, and then just breathe. Maybe even put your hand on your heart and then ask like, what are you protecting me from right now? What are you protecting me from? That one line of dialog. Just see what you get. It can melt literally years of
inattention because what you resist persists and what you acknowledge is going to soften. It's like when you feel seen and you're more open. So with that acknowledgment and with that kindness, healing starts to happen naturally when you start accepting yourself, accepting all of you. Instead of resisting who you are. We have to meet ourselves where we're at before we can change, and most of us are constantly trying to get away from ourselves. So here's the part. A lot of people overlook that I've been finding in my own work. That's really invaluable. Fixing is focused on deficits. Thriving comes when we focus on strengths. There is a lot of research
on this actually. So Gallup Clifton Strengths has studied millions of people worldwide. And it shows the research shows that people who focus on developing what's right with them, they tend to be more engaged at work. They experience greater well-being. They report higher life satisfaction. One study even found that people who use strengths daily, they are three times more likely to report an excellent quality of life and six times more likely to be engaged in work. Now, why is this when you focus, when you build on what's already working, you create like an upward spiral of movement and meaning. Your
brain releases dopamine, that anticipation and reward neurotransmitter, and that's reinforcing the new behavior. It's kind of like neuroplasticity in your favor. So the science says focusing on your strengths doesn't make you naive. It doesn't mean you're not well balanced. It makes you effective. I want to share a little story or anecdote. So my friend and colleague Corey, he is a transformational leadership coach and facilitator. I've worked with him before. He's brilliant. I'll link him below. I attended a session that he led on strengths and he shared an
analogy that's always stuck with me. You think about a kid, okay, if you have a kid, maybe this will be relevant. If not, just imagine. But imagine you've got a kid. They come to you. They come home with a report card and it's got, you know, a couple A's, A's in math and science, and it's got a C in reading and an F in history. Where are you going to focus as the parent. Okay. Now most people and this is not just hypothetical. There have been actual surveys about this. Most people focus on the weaker areas and that makes sense. You know, if I'm a parent, I'm
like, yeah, I want my kid to do well. I want them to succeed. And, you know, they're already doing great at math and science. And so let's spend more time on the other stuff. Let's spend more time on the reading and the history so that they can be well rounded and balanced. But if I think about the perspective of that child, their experience can become, oh, I didn't do enough. That's the focus. It's. What's wrong. They might even feel shame. I am not enough. I remember feeling this when I had all A's in a B, and that's the focus. I'm like, ooh, I'm not enough. I there must be something wrong with me. We learn then to
prioritize what's wrong. We look at the problem areas and with that then we learn to deprive criticize what's actually strong, our strengths. You know, it's almost like if there's a graph, if we're constantly focusing on our dips, we might be able to make them a little bit better and then they become flat. But we don't ever build the strengths we have into real peaks. So the sentiment by this survey and study in Gallup's work around strengths, it's not suggesting like, okay, just forget about reading and history or whatever, but it's like, what if
more of the energy and the Attention went into cultivating the child's strength, letting them become the best that they can at science and math, following their heart, following their mind around what calls to them, and probably their spirit to what could be possible Then, instead of focusing so much on being balanced or well-rounded, actually sending the message I see you. That's where we can all grow the most when we stop fixing and start seeing others and ourselves as we are. So my suggestion is we flip this 80 / 20 ratio intentionally. We start living from what's right. Focusing on that instead of fixing what's wrong. So imagine that your attention is like sunlight. And wherever you shine the light, things grow. And
when 80% of that light goes toward fixing the weeds. All right, you kind of starve the flowers. But when you flip it, when you shine 80% of your light on what's already alive, you can create like a whole new ecosystem inside of yourself That's what this 80 / 20 shift is about. Rewilding your inner landscape toward aliveness. So here are a couple of ways you can start practically. One is name. What's working? Stop every single day and ask what is right with me today. Like appreciate yourself. Maybe it's your persistence or your sense of humor or your sensitivity or your thoughtfulness. that feels true. You know,
this is it could be a self appreciation practice. It could be naming your strengths. I did the Gallup Clifton strengths assessment. You could try that. It is paid. But I found it really helpful to name my strengths and lean into them. Another thing is to refocus your language. I really believe in the power of language instead of I need to stop being anxious, flip it. What do you want? I want to feel calm instead of what you don't want. What do you want? Instead of I need to stop procrastinating. I want to act with ease and clarity. I want to show up for myself and take
action. Your brain organizes around the language you use, especially subconsciously. The next is to schedule joy. Actually intentionally prioritize it. Don't wait for the work to be done to let yourself play or rest. Joy is the point. Make it a part of the work. Really make it a priority. Tend to the patterns in the pain rather than fix. This is the next one. So when a pattern comes up, just stop and ask what's the pain? What's the need that this is protecting? And then offer some compassion instead of criticism. You can check out my episode on
compassion and self-compassion, if that's helpful. There's a ton of other practical tips in there. The goal overall is to spend more of your energy cultivating aliveness than analyzing your pain. It's still going to come up. It's going to come up forever, no matter how much healing we do. But joy can become a new default lens here and now, rather than this reward that you're constantly waiting for. The ultimate paradigm shift I'm sort of suggesting here is that the point of personal growth is not to become free of your patterns or
to become perfect. It's to become present. You don't have to be free of your patterns to relieve suffering. What we need is self-acceptance to better accept myself as I am, flaws and all. So if 80% of your time has been spent fixing, just see what could happen if you flip it. When you let joy and strength and you know meaning in your life, Take the lead. Healing is still going to happen, but maybe some of it's more in the background and becomes like a byproduct of living and being present. You don't need to be fully healed to live a full life. You just need to be
willing to focus on what's already whole within you. You are already whole just as you are now. Patterns and all. What you water grows, what you focus on your brain will build more of. So the invitation is spend a little less time fixing, a little more time relishing what you already are. So just take one more breath here and I want you to reflect inward. Ask yourself, where am I already doing better than I'm giving myself credit for? Actually, reflect on that right now. Maybe even close your eyes. Maybe write it down to journal about later. Whenever you do actually feel
what happens in your body as you let that question land. Is there a softening? Is there a warmth? Is there resistance even? That's okay. Whatever it is, you don't need to fix it. But let yourself notice what's right. Right now, this is where it begins. And if you want to dive more into your strengths, I incorporate this into my Power of Becoming program. Okay, I mentioned it previously, and this episode will mark the last call for enrollment. But honestly, after so much work facilitating transformational healing work that focuses on patterns and fixing,
I realize there is so much power in focusing on what's right with you. Please check it out. Details are below. It'll be in January. It's an in-person retreat program where you're going to get clear about your values and what matters to you, so that you can build a true, authentic vision for your life. And you're going to get a plan for it. All right. This is getting your vision. I'm calling it off of your vision board and into your body and doing it from a place of strengths, not fixing yourself. Okay. The truth is, there's nothing wrong with you. You don't need to be fixed. You just need
to remember who you really are. And when you do that, you find the joy that's available to you here and now. So the link is below. If you found today's episode supportive, I appreciate you subscribing sharing it with a friend, please leave a five star review and rating. I'm really trying to get to that 100 reviews on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. I'm grateful for your support. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Please email me. Let me know your thoughts about what's coming up for you in the podcast. And as a reminder, I have also got a hotline now. Thank you. Those of you who have been
calling in call, leave a voicemail. Let me know. Thoughts, questions, challenges, anything you want me to speak about in the podcast. I want to use those questions in an upcoming episode. So please know you are not a project to be fixed. You're whole and perfect just as you are. You have so many unique strengths and qualities to share with the world. Be well and be you.
